Boulder County commissioners get more than a dozen applications for RTD board post

By John FryarLongmont Times-Call

Posted:
01/18/2013 08:41:06 PM MST

Updated:
01/19/2013 11:03:28 AM MST

BOULDER -- Two former mayors, a former deputy mayor and a former town council member are among the Boulder County residents who have applied for appointment to a soon-to-be-vacated seat on the Regional Transportation District's board of directors.

Former Boulder Mayor Susan Osborne, former Boulder Deputy Mayor Spense Havlick, former Louisville Mayor Charles Sisk, and Gary Sprung, a onetime Crested Butte Town Council member who now lives in Boulder, are among the 15 people who filed applications by Thursday afternoon's deadline, according to Michelle Krezek, the staff deputy for the Boulder County Board of Commissioners.

County commissioners will be picking someone to succeed John Tayer, a six-year RTD board member who's resigning from the transit agency's District O board seat to focus on his new job as president and chief executive officer of the Boulder Chamber.

Other applicants include several people who have run for other elective office in the recent past: Kai Abelkis, a Niwot resident who pursued a bid for the Democratic Party's nomination for the District 2 seat on the Board of County Commissioners before a 2011 redrawing of the board's district boundaries took him out of that district; Maureen Denig, the Longmont GOP candidate for that District 2 county commissioner's seat in last year's election; and Angie Layton of Louisville, who lost last year's Democratic primary election contest for the Legislature's House District 12 seat.

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RTD board seats are nonpartisan, although Tayer's replacement will ultimately be appointed by a majority vote of Commissioners Cindy Domenico, Deb Gardner and Elise Jones, all Democrats. The District O seat will be up for election in 2014.

Others who submitted applications for the RTD post are: former Telluride public works director Stan Berryman, now a Boulder resident; Louisville resident Peter Briggs, the Denver-based labor relations director for First Group America Inc.; Linda Carrizales of Louisville, an administrative lead technician in the Boulder County Treasurer's Office; Jennifer Knerr of Niwot, vice president and associate publisher of Paradigm Publishers; Lyons resident Jerry Skeels, a retired Federal Aviation Administration employee; rural Longmont-area organic farmer Steve Szabo; Boulder resident Mary Dolores Young, an outreach specialist for Via Mobility Services; and Boulder resident Daniel Ziskin, co-founder and partner in an investment business that buys abandoned damaged houses and restores them for resale.

Krezek said that by Tuesday she expects to get lists from each of the commissioners about the applicants they'd like to see advance to a Jan. 28 public forum, where about five semifinalists will make presentations and be available for questions from RTD District O residents. After that, Krezek said, the commissioners will probably narrow the field of candidates further and interview those finalists personally before officially voting on someone to fill the transit agency board position. She said the commissioners hope to make their pick before the RTD's Feb. 5 board meeting.

The RTD's District O board post represents an area that includes Boulder, Louisville, Superior, Lyons, Hygiene, Niwot and Gunbarrel, as well as parts of the city of Longmont lying southwest of Mountain View Avenue and Hover Street.

The person the Boulder County commissioners pick to replace Tayer will serve alongside Longmont's Judy Lubow, who won election last November to the RTD board's District I seat, representing an area that stretches along the U.S. Highway 287 corridor from Broomfield north into Longmont.